Top 10 Social Media Threats Executive Teams Face Today

Executive Summary

• The World Economic Forum just named only narrative attacks that include deepfakes, misinformation, and disinformation  as the #1 global risk for the second year in a row 
• Social media narrative attack threats can significantly impact executive security and can result in serious reputational, financial, and psychological harm. 
• These attacks can also result in physical threats to corporate executives and their families.
• Partnering with a narrative intelligence partner is a proven way to reduce the risk of social media narrative attack threats and boost executive security. 

Social media is a strategic part of executive business, allowing corporate leaders to build their brands by connecting with potential partners, investors, customers, and talent. However, social media can also lead to narrative attack threats that can move from the digital to the physical world, posing serious risks to executive protection measures, such as reputational, financial, psychological, and potentially physical harm.

While social media narrative attack threats loom large in an interconnected and platform-heavy world, security teams can take measures to combat executive targeting. In this article, we’ll discuss why social media narrative attacks threaten executive security, the top 10 digital attacks that executives face, and why threat assessment and risk management services like narrative intelligence can help boost executive protection efforts. 

Why are Narrative Attacks on Social Media a Threat to Executive Security?

• Higher Visibility Roughly 70% of Fortune 100 CEOs have at least one social media account, with 48% posting at least monthly. In 2022, the number of CEOs’ followers increased by 85%, with each account averaging 30,000 or more followers.

• Deep Distrust We live in an age of deep institutional distrust, with negative sentiment extending to corporate leadership and leading to executive targeting. Edelman’s 2022 Trust Barometer revealed that 49% of the population distrusts CEOs; CEO Today reports that only 25% of adults believe that large businesses deliver a positive impact.

• An Expanding Information Landscape Today’s communications landscape is massive and democratized. Anyone with an Internet connection can distribute malicious messages and content globally—often for free. This is typically done via social media platforms and niche websites, from which harmful narratives can jump into mainstream news.

The problem of executive targeting shows no signs of slowing; Spiceworks revealed that executive impersonations have increased 26% over the past year, while executive-targeted scams, fraud, and piracy have climbed 29% over the same period.

AI Technology: A Growing Social Media Threat to Executives

Artificial intelligence (AI)- powered technology is becoming more sophisticated in launching social media attacks, particularly narrative attacks. Realistic-looking deepfake videos and other manipulated media are easier than ever to produce, and anyone can use them to harm. 

According to The Forrester External Threat Intelligence Service Providers Landscape, Q1 2025, “AI is increasingly used to enhance threat intelligence but is also a source of new threats. AI-generated attacks will become more complex and lower the barrier for new threat actors. Convincing deepfakes and complex attacks are harbingers of more sophisticated threats, driving the need to fight fire with fire. Defensively, AI-infused threat intelligence will be able to handle expanding data volumes, identify previously unknown relationships, extract finer contextual data points, and provide deeper multisource data infusion. Expect more automation with predictive analytics and targeted recommendations.”

Top 10 Social Media Threats to Executive Security

Social media threats to executive security include, but are not limited to, the following narrative attack threat types:

Threat #1: Sophisticated Narrative Attacks

The most common social media threat to executive security is a narrative attack. A narrative attack is any assertion that shapes perception about a person, place, or thing in the information ecosystem. It is the most pervasive and dangerous social media threat an executive will face. Executive-targeting attacks can result in serious reputational, financial, psychological, and physical harm.

Threat #2: Deepfakes

Another type of social media threat to executive security is deepfake content. Deepfakes are images, videos, and audio recordings manipulated with AI. This hyper-realistic content can easily convince audiences that a target, such as an executive, was caught doing or saying something that, in reality, never happened. While manipulated content used to be easy to spot and debunk, constantly advancing technology makes it difficult to do so. 

Threat #3: Social Engineering 

Social media platforms can be used for social engineering attacks like phishing. For example, an executive might find an urgent message in their inbox with a malicious link from a sender posing as a trusted individual (such as an IT department employee) asking the executive to act quickly. Clicking the link can result in stolen login credentials and the threat actor hijacking the account. 

Threat #4: Reconnaissance 

Reconnaissance is a serious threat to executive security; this social media attack type involves threat actors gleaning information about executives and their inner circle through social media activity, including relationships, patterns, and other personal details. This enables better executive targeting and more effective attacks, with potential outcomes including identity theft, stalking, property damage, and physical violence.

Threat #5: Doxxing

Doxxing is a form of online harassment in which personal information is shared without consent. This social media threat against executives usually includes personally identifiable information (PII), such as home addresses, phone numbers, financial information, Social Security numbers, etc. The risks to executive protection include public embarrassment, blackmail, stalking, identity theft, property damage to their homes and businesses, and physical harm.

Threat #6: Swatting

Swatting occurs when a threat actor receives information such as an executive’s home address and calls law enforcement with (false) claims of serious criminal activity. Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams will arrive and assume an active threat, potentially leading to physical harm. Such information can come from a malicious insider or findings from a cyber attack shared on the dark web and social media.

Threat #7: Oversharing 

Publicly sharing personal information such as real-time travel photos and itineraries, regular routines, and other details provides valuable intelligence to executive-targeting threat actors, who exploit this information. While executives must exercise caution against oversharing on social media, their families, staff, and other inner circle must also consider the risks their social media activity presents to executive security.

Threat #8: Geotagging and Location Sharing

Geotagging and location sharing impact executive protection by offering real-time updates on executives’ locations. Social media location-based services include check-ins, tagging, and geotagged photos, which make executives vulnerable to physical attacks, demonstrations, property damage, and stalking. While corporate leaders may not engage in this type of sharing, this is an example of how executives’ family and staff activities on social media can impact executive security.

Threat #9: Compromised and Hijacked Accounts

Another common social media threat to executive protection is a compromised or hijacked account. This type of social media attack occurs when threat actors gain unauthorized access to an executive account (often with credential stuffing, where previously leaked credentials are used for access). This impacts executive security by opening the executive up to identity theft, financial loss, reputational damage, and more. 

Threat #10: The Dark Web

This unregulated and unindexed part of the Internet contains information that can impact executive security. Leaked PII is often available for sale and distribution on the dark web before it travels to social media platforms on the open web. Threat actors also commonly use the dark web for recruitment to help launch attacks against executives and their companies, including cyberattacks and social media attacks.  

Mitigating the Risk of Narrative Attacks on Social Media to Safeguard Executive Security

Despite the threats that social media presents to executive security, there are solid steps that teams can take as part of a robust executive protection strategy. 

• Monitor the Landscape: Narrative attacks on social media highlight a significant gap in traditional threat intelligence and social listening tools, instead focusing on early detection of coordinated narrative attacks targeting the executive or the company.
• Be Proactive: Executive security teams should assume there is a threat, even when things seem quiet. They should regularly assess social media narrative attack threats and update their online and physical executive security plans.
• Establish Clear Social Media Guidelines to protect against executive targeting. Teams can boost executive protection measures by including delayed posting and requiring a communications officer to approve executive-related updates.
• Provide Social Media Security Training. The training should include instruction on security and privacy settings, password best practices, securing devices, spotting malicious links, and using multi-factor authentication (MFA) for accounts.
• Include Family and Staff in Social Media Policies and Training: Executives’ families’ and staff’s online activities impact executive security. Ensure they receive their own set guidelines and training on social media best practices.
• Have a Plan to proactively reduce risk and respond: A social media narrative attack is a matter of “when,” not “if.” Security leaders should actively monitor for threats, and communications officers should leverage press or PR contacts and have rapid response communications plans for stakeholders, investors, staff, and the public.
• Partner with a Narrative Intelligence Expert. A narrative intelligence partner can monitor the entire threat landscape and discover the who, why, and how behind narrative attacks before they go viral. This boosts protective intelligence and helps executive protection teams make better, more strategic decisions.

Narrative Intelligence: An Essential Tool for Executive Security

Narrative intelligence fills a massive gap in traditional threat intelligence and standard social listening to detect harmful narratives targeting executives before they gain traction and become out of control. It is becoming a critical part of protective intelligence. Teams increasingly rely on narrative intelligence partners as a cornerstone of their executive protection efforts. Gartner predicts the market will exceed $30 billion globally by 2028.

Narrative intelligence teams map the networks harmful narratives touch, the threat actors behind them, the anomalous behavior that scales them, and the cohorts and communities that connect them. These proactive steps enable organizations to understand narrative threats as they scale and before they become harmful. Effective narrative intelligence measures require examining the entire threat landscape—from social media platforms to community chat rooms to news sites and even the dark web—to give a comprehensive view of your executive and company risk profile. 

Take control of your executive protection strategy today—schedule an executive threat and risk assessment now.